ABSTRACT
Money laundering, or “riciclaggio” in Italian, “blanqueo” in Spanish, “blanchiment” in French, and comparable terms in other languages, is widely understood to mean the process of concealing the criminal origin of assets and investments or the illegal nature of a financial transaction. The widespread acceptance of this unofficial, popular meaning often leads the public to assume that “money laundering” has an official, juridical definition, which is rarely the case. That term is a useful shorthand phrase for a complex process, which has even been
dissected into its component elements of placement, layering and integration of illegal proceeds (see Section 2.5). However, when legal instruments are constructed to prevent and control the money laundering phenomenon, more precise juridical terminology is required, e.g.: “…the concealment or disguise of the true nature, source, location, disposition, movement, rights with respect to, or ownership of property, knowing that such property is derived from an offence…”.1 What are commonly called “money laundering offenses” include a myriad of violations of regulatory and penal rules including reporting schemes for currency transactions and transfers, registration requirements for financial intermediaries, and prohibitions against knowingly possessing or conducting transactions with the proceeds or instrumentalities of crime.
